Eating My Way Through Austin

As some of you may know, I just recently moved to Austin, Texas. The live music and food scene here make this city a great place to live. After being here a little over a week, I’ve realized that there are hundreds of restaurants and food trucks around the city. So what better way to find some of the standouts than to go on one of the local Austin food tours. Luckily, there’s a company called Austin Eats Food Tours who do just that.

Our tour began at a farmer’s market downtown. We started at Cocoa Puro Chocolate, who make cocoa beans that are covered in 3 layers of chocolate (dark, milk, and white chocolate) and cocoa powder. I know this sounds amazing and it was pretty good. The cocoa bean just had a fairly bitter taste and I’m not the biggest fan of bitter (dark) chocolate, but it is a really interesting concept.

The 2nd stop was my favorite of the tour. This is Texas and Texans love their barbecue. We stopped at one of the best BBQ joints in the city: La Barbecue. When our group walked up there was quite a long line of people waiting, but because we were on the tour we got to skip the line and dig right into the BBQ goodness. Although La Barbecue is most famous for its pork ribs and the sausage was tasty, my favorite was the fatty brisket. So tender it just melts in your mouth.

After sufficiently stuffing our faces with barbecue we were off to the third stop on the tour, which happened to be my other favorite: Lucky’s Puccias. The namesake sandwich, the Lucky’s Puccia, is an authentic wood-fired Italian sandwich consisting of prosciutto, mozzarella, arugula, tomato, and basil oil, all on fresh baked-to-order bread. My mouth is watering just writing this. I’m definitely going to have to find myself in that neighborhood again soon.

At this point, being halfway through the tour, I was starting to get a bit full. But with 3 more stops to go, it was time to just power through. You can never let good food go uneaten.

Next up was Burro Cheese Kitchen. First thoughts: YES, I also love cheese! But it wasn’t until they brought out their signature Croque Madame sandwich that I truly fell in love. Serrano ham, gruyere cheese, pesto aioli, a fried egg and dulce de leche on buttery sourdough. The combination of flavors in the first bite may confuse your taste buds, but you’ll quickly be hooked.

Due to a last-minute schedule change, dessert was next. We stopped at Sugar Momma’s Bakeshop, which is known to have some of the best cupcakes in town. I tried the Marilyn Monroe, one of their most popular choices. It’s a vanilla cupcake topped with Madagascar bourbon vanilla buttercream. Even though I was feeling a bit stuffed, I devoured the whole thing without too much thought.

The last and final stop on the tour was to a food truck called Hey!…Are You Gonna Eat or What? Quite a creative name, but the best was yet to follow. The bar was set pretty high before we got there. This is the #1 rated food truck in Austin and the #2 restaurant on Yelp. If you like deep-fried goodness, then this is the place for you. We got their Monte Cristo sandwich, which consists of hickory pit-smoked ham, mesquite-smoked turkey, mild cheddar, and provolone served with a homemade cherry and fig jelly. This is battered in Shiner bock beer and deep fried. The sandwich on it’s own was really good, but what really makes it is the fig jelly.

So if you happen to be in Austin and are trying to figure out where the best spots to eat are, I highly recommend doing one of these Austin food tours. Austin Eats run a few different tours, but the food truck tour was great.

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